Browsing: recipe

So Easter is coming and one of the great traditions of Easter is the Hot Cross Bun. I have never made them before so I decided I would have ago this year. The Hot Cross bun is a celebration food that celebrates the end of Lent and piles in all the things you may have given up for the last seven weeks. Made from a heavily spiced dough, the bun is laden with rich fruit. A delicious treat – and one we shouldn’t eat too often!

Hot Cross buns cooling in Andy's Kitchen

So with apologies to Nigella and Felicity Cloake of the Guardian who’s recipes I have butchered here is the official Ethical Superstore guide to making your own Ethical Hot Cross Bun.

Ingredients

200ml milk
¼ tsp powdered nutmeg
½ tsp powdered Suma Organic and Fairtrade cinnamon
¼ tsp powdered mixed spice
Pinch of saffron
7g of powdered “easy bake” yeast (or Doves Farm quick yeast)
50g golden Traidcraft Fairtrade caster sugar
450g Doves Farm organic strong white flour
100g butter
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground ginger
3 eggs
150g Suma Organic currants
50g mixed peel
3 tbsp Doves Farm organic plain flour 

Cooking time: In total this is going to take four hours and for the best flavour prepare the spicy milk the day before.

1. Heat 200ml milk gently in a pan along with the cinnamon,  nutmeg and mixed spice until just boiling. Set aside, preferably overnight.

2. Next day warm the milk to body temperature and then add yeast and 1 tsp sugar.

3. Mix the flour and  butter in a large bowl and rub together until well mixed.

4. Add the rest of the sugar, the salt and ginger.

5. Beat together two of the eggs and add with the yeast mixture to the flour\butter mixture. Stir in, adding enough milk to make a soft dough.

6. Place on a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

7. Cover and leave in a warm place for  a couple of hours until it has doubled in size.

8. Place back on a floured surface and knead for a minute or so. Flatten it out and scatter over the fruit and peel. Knead again to spread the fruit around evenly.

9. Divide into 16 equal pieces and roll these into round, bun shapes. Put on If you care grease proof paper lined baking trays and mark a cross on the top of each one. Cover and put in a warm place until doubled in size (again!).

10. Set the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and beat together an egg with a little milk. Mix the plain flour,  a pinch of salt and enough cold water to make a stiff paste. Paint the top of each bun with egg wash, and then draw a thick cross where you scored the cross on each bun.

11. Put into the oven and bake for about 25 minutes until golden.

12. Meanwhile, mix 1 tbsp caster sugar with 1 tbsp boiling water. When the buns come out of the oven, brush them with this before transferring to a rack to cool.

13. Eat with lots of butter, lots of friends and lots of chat of how to make the world a better place.

Have fun and have  a great Easter. Once consumed on Easter Sunday you will a strenuous Easter Egg hunt to burn off the calories. Make sure you have lots of Divine Easter eggs well hidden around your garden!

What better way to show you care than to whip up some delicious, vegan friendly cupcakes? This tasty recipe just goes to show that you don’t need eggs or milk to enjoy your favourite tea-time snack!

Read the rest of Valentine’s Day Vegan Cupcakes »

Wondering about how to start composting, but don’t know very much?  Annoyed that your compost isn’t breaking down properly?  Too many leaves in your garden this Autumn that you don’t know what to do with? Let me enlighten you with a simple recipe for the perfect compost, to encourage you on your green-living way.

Read the rest of Recipe for the Perfect Compost »

Just to be clear the SAD* I’m talking about here is Seasonal Appetite Desires.

I don’t know about you, but as the temperature drops and daylight hours shorten I find myself craving different foods to those I cherish in summertime.  In July, ‘crispy organic lettuce drizzled with vinaigrette dressing’, is a phrase guaranteed to provoke an almost Pavlovian response within me, but come November my palate seems to change as radically as the weather.  It’s goodbye to ‘fresh’ and ‘light’ and hello to ‘hearty’ and ‘rich’! Whilst I’m not quite ready to start my menu planning for Christmas dinner just yet, comfort food has established itself firmly at the top of my menu wish list.
We all have our own favourite comfort food, that dish which we adore, not only for its pleasing taste but also for the sense of contentment that it delivers. For me it has to be Rice Pudding, and here’s my absolute favourite recipe for it. It’s inexpensive, uncomplicated, and easy to prepare, especially with the slow cooker.  I just can’t recommend it enough ,except, did I mention that it’s organic and suitable for vegans too?
Ingredients:
1L Provamel organic Vanilla flavoured Soya Milk
115g Suma organic Arborio Rice (uncooked)
95g Equal Exchange Fairtrade & Organic Raw Cane sugar
20g Suma Organic Desiccated Coconut
1 tsp Steenbergs Vanilla Extract Fairtrade 100ml
0.5 tsp Suma Organic ground Cinnamon
a dash of salt
1.5 tbsp vegan margarine

Preparation:
This is so easy.  Just combine all ingredients in a slow cooker.

(I used the Morphy Richards Ecolectric Slow Cooker)
Cook on high for 5 hours. Stir once every hour, until the desired consistency is reached.
Cooking time may vary, depending on your slow cooker and the consistency which you like your rice pudding.
Grate some of your favourite dark chocolate on top before serving, (I used Organic Seed & Bean Company Dark Fairtrade Chocolate Bar, 60g)

Serves: 4  hearty portions.
Looks gorgeous presented (as photographed) in our stylish, red, 100% recycled martini glass too.

*Sorry if you came across this page whilst searching for some relief from Seasonal Affective Disorder, you may want to check out some of light therapy products, click here.

Banana Beer, Banana Cake, & errm . . . Bananas!

Whether you’re bloated on bananas or you’ve simply bought too many; there’s only hours left of Fairtrade Fortnight’s Go Bananas campaign!

So here’s another way to get peeling and get eating to help set the Fairtrade banana-eating record attempt.

Try this simple recipe to make your very own scrummy Banana Cake . . .

• Take 3 medium bananas (Fairtrade, of course!) and mash up; add lemon juice to prevent browness

• Combine 150g soft butter and 150g soft brown sugar (Demerara) and mix well

• Add an egg and 150g of self raising flour to the sugar butter mixture and beat then repeat and add another egg and 150g of self raising flour

• Then add 80g of walnuts or sultanas (or both!) roughly chopped and stir through

• To finish add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to keep the cake moist and stir through

• Line a loaf tin with grease proof paper and add the wet mixture

• Place in a preheated oven on 190c for 40 – 50 minutes depending on how temperamental the oven is then take out of the oven and leave in the tin on a rack to cool down for 20 minutes.

• DONE!

Try it over the weekend and let us know how you get on, or if you’ve any other suggestions on how to use up those bananas before they’re past their best drop us a comment below. . .

The slow cooker has fast become a valuable member of my family; my mum bought me one as a gift last year when my oven died and she promised me it would be save me time and deliver an easy nutritious tasty meal. Boy, was she right!

I use my slow cooker mainly for joints, curries, and chilli’s. Following on from a conversation with friends I was amazed when they told me their slow cookers are usually packed away during the spring/summer months as it’s associated with comfort winter food! Not in our household!

I decided to try a recipe that is one of our family favourites – Nigella’s Ham in Cola . In the winter its fab with mashed potato and roasted vegetables – in the summer it’s delicious with salads, jacket potatoes and warm breads  – for anyone who hasn’t tried it please don’t be put off by the title – soooo delicious and moreish!

Read the rest of Day 3 of the Ethical Superstore Slow Cooking Challenge »

For my slow cooker challenge I’ve tried to do the easiest cheapest and most flavoursome slow cooked recipe which requires minimal effort.

So here goes with Easy Slow cooked Moroccan lamb.

The ingredients

Lamb neck fillet chopped into bite size pieces you don’t need loads about 300g
1 massive sweet potato or the equivalent of about 400g
1 Tin of tomatoes chopped
Fresh tomato’s if you have any
1 Jar of Biona Harrissa relish
1 medium red onion
1tblspn plain flour/1tsp cinnamon/1tspn ground cumin (used for coating the lamb)

The Method

To start with I chopped the onion and then fried it off / softened it with a little olive oil and added it to the bottom of the slow cooker.

I then took a bowl added a tablespoon of flour a tsp of cinnamon and some ground cumin and

Read the rest of Slow Cooked with Relish »

Lunchtimes in our office have seemed a little tame recently.  Following the success of the recent Ethical SOUPerstore challenge, when a number of us demonstrated it was possible to beat the credit crunch by sharing a tasty and ethical lunch, we’ve been developing a culinary itch we just had to scratch.  But how?
Enter the Morphy Richards Ecolectric Slow Cooker.

Slow cooking has much to recommend it
•    Convenient – fits a busy lifestyle, put all you ingredients in that morning and come home to a delicious meal in the evening.
•    Flavoursome – Slow cooked food is cooked in its own juices fully absorbing all flavours.
•    Economical – Low levels of energy are used to power a slow cooker.
•    Versatile – Cook everything from curry, soup, chowder, casserole and even desserts.

Environmentally, slow cooking has advantages too – slow cookers use low levels of energy, making them economical to run (rather than heating a large conventional oven). Better still the Morphy Richards claim that this Ecolectric Slow Cooker uses up to 44% less energy than other slow cookers on the market.

So four of us have got together to give it a thorough trial. . .

Read the rest of Ethical Cookerstore? »